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This paper aims to explore the meaning of smart office environments from a user perspective by investigating user preferences and expectations.

Eleven semi-structured interviews with the users after moving into a smart office building of a Dutch Municipality and an observation as complementary data were conducted. The data were analysed based on the grounded theory and thematic analysis, combining a reflexive approach to the literature review.

Two main themes were revealed addressing user expectations and preferences for smart office environments: “enhanced interaction” with the social and physical office environment and “sense-making” of the smart concept (or smartness). Within these themes, basic and smart office aspects were identified and classified based on their association with smart office concepts or technology.

The findings reveal the meaning of the smart office concepts from a user perspective by highlighting the importance of user experience on enhanced interaction and sense-making of the smart office concept, equipped with basic and smart aspects.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to qualitatively examine drivers underlying the meaning of smart office concepts from a user point of view. Organisations, environmental psychologists, designers and managers can use the findings of this study to develop guidelines for a successful smart office design.

Facilities management (FM) activities affect citizens’ health and safety, long-term urban environmental sustainability and the relationships between the built and natural environments of cities. This study aims to comprehend the status of smart FM tools application, how they are used to improve the delivery of FM services and the barriers to their implementation.

To investigate the current smart solutions that leverage the quality of FM service, a case study based on the FM practice in Hong Kong was carried out. The case study was conducted in two phases of data acquisition based on a qualitative research methodology. After conducting in-depth interviews to determine the application of smart FM tools in different types of properties and to identify the initiatives and barriers to smart FM tool application, three workshops were conducted to validate the findings and further investigate the influence of FM professionals on smart FM tools application in Hong Kong.

The findings of the case study revealed, firstly, that four types of smart FM tools – user-centric, safety and hygiene, maintenance and sustainability-oriented – are used to assist the delivery of FM services. Secondly, smart FM tools are shown to be useful in assisting FM activities. Thirdly, the existing barriers to smart FM tool application manifest differently in shopping malls, office buildings and residential buildings. Fourthly, smart FM tools are used to address the four attributes of user needs: comfort, health and wellbeing, convenience and information to occupants.

The value of this study lies in its focus on the industry level (FM industry) and the application process of smart FM tools in different types of property, revealing the benefits, initiatives and barriers to their future application. This study provides a comprehensive picture of the current status and elaborates the barriers to smart FM tool application, which will help FM practitioners to make strategic decisions on selecting and developing smart FM tools. Also, this study will facilitate smart FM tool application policy development.

Despite the opportunities of digital twins (DTs) for smart buildings, limited research has been conducted regarding the facility management stage, and this is explained by the high complexity of accurately representing and modelling the physics behind the DTs process. This study thus organises and consolidates the fragmented literature on DTs implementation for smart buildings at the facility management stage by exploring the enablers, applications and challenges and examining the interrelationships amongst them.

A systematic literature review approach is adopted to analyse and synthesise the existing literature relating to the subject topic.

The study revealed six main categories of enablers of DTs for smart building at the facility management stage, namely perception technologies, network technologies, storage technologies, application technologies, knowledge-building and design processes. Three substantial categories of DTs application for smart buildings were revealed at the facility management stage: efficient operation and service monitoring, efficient building energy management and effective smart building maintenance. Subsequently, the top four major challenges were identified as being “lack of a systematic and comprehensive reference model”, “real-time data integration”, “the complexity and uncertainty nature of real-time data” and “real-time data visualisation”. An integrative framework is finally proposed by examining the interactive relationship amongst the enablers, the applications and the challenges.

The findings could guide facility managers/engineers to fairly understand the enablers, applications and challenges when DTs are being implemented to improve smart building performance and achieve user satisfaction at the facility management stage.

This study contributes to the knowledge body on DTs by extending the scope of the existing studies to identify the enablers and applications of DTs for smart buildings at the facility management stage and the specific challenges.

The implementation of smart maintenance (SM) has greatly benefited facility managers, construction project managers and other stakeholders within the built environment. Unfortunately, its actualization for stakeholders in the built environment in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) era remains a challenge. To reduce the challenge, this study aims at conducting a bibliometric analysis to unearth the critical success factors supporting SM implementation. The future direction and practice of SM in the construction industry were also explored.

A bibliometric approach was adopted for reviewing articles extracted from the Scopus database. Keywords such as (“smart maintenance“) OR (“intelligent maintenance”) OR (“technological maintenance”) OR (“automated maintenance”) OR (“computerized maintenance”) were used to extract articles from the Scopus database. The studies were restricted between 2006 and 2021 to capture the 4IR era. The initial extracted papers were 1,048; however, 288 papers were selected and analysed using VOSviewer software.

The findings revealed that the critical success factors supporting the implementation of SM in the 4IR era are collaboration, digital twin design, energy management system and decentralized data management system. Regarding the future practice of SM in the 4IR era, it was also revealed that SM is possible to evolve into maintenance 4.0. This will support the autonomous maintenance of infrastructures in the built environment.

The use of a single database contributed to the limitation of the findings from this study.

Despite the limitations, the findings of this study contributed to practice and research by providing stakeholders in the built environment with the direction of SM practice.

Stakeholders in the built environment have clamoured to implement SM in the 4IR era. This study provided the critical success factors for adopting SM, guaranteeing the 4IR era. It also provides the research trends and direction of SM practice.

This paper aims to analyze the dependence structure between the Green Sukuk Spread in Malaysia and uncertainty factors from January 1, 2017, to May 23, 2023, covering two main periods: the pre-COVID-19 and the COVID-19 periods.

This study contributes to the current literature by explicitly modeling nonlinear dependencies using the Regular vine copula approach to capture asymmetric characteristics of the tail dependence distribution. This study used the Archimedean copula models: Student’s-t, Gumbel, Gaussian, Clayton, Frank and Joe, which exhibit different tail dependence structures.

The empirical results suggest that Green Sukuk and various uncertainty variables have the strongest co-dependency before and during the COVID-19 crisis. Due to external uncertainties (COVID-19), the results reveal that global factors, such as the Infect-EMV-index and the higher financial stress index, significantly affect the spread of Green Sukuk. Interestingly, in times of COVID-19, its dependence on Green Sukuk and the news sentiment seems to be a symmetric tail dependence with a Student’s-t copula. This result is relevant for hedging strategies, as investors can enhance the performance of their portfolio during the COVID-19 crash period.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the dependency structure between Green Sukuk and uncertainty factors. It is relevant for market participants seeking to improve their risk management for Green Sukuk.

In this chapter, the emerging education workforce management approach known as talent-centered education leadership (TCEL) is reviewed. The approach takes inspiration from progressive and cutting-edge talent management thinking and practices that emphasizes employers' intentional focus on humanizing and authentically engaging with their workforce. Pertinent to the theme of the book, the discussion then segues to the importance of diversity and inclusion as a precursor for these efforts and demonstrates how equity and organizational excellence are mutually compatible in the workplace. Relatedly, consideration is given to how traditional perceptions of “professionalism” can exacerbate inequity in the workplace. The chapter concludes by highlighting the seven core principles of TCEL to prepare school employers to embrace the future of education work.

It is suggested that, to be successful, innovation teams should be small and consist of people with key expertise who want to participate and develop new solutions within their organisations. When it comes to conducting innovation work, I suggest shared leadership may be a factor influencing success. In this chapter, a theoretical framework is presented on the shared leadership of innovation teams. The key to establishing shared leadership in innovation teams is to plan for it as the team is created, not after the team has already been formed, as this may result in various problems in the intended innovation project. The proposed framework details key aspects to consider; some of which are related to external factors such as management and resources, and some to internal factors such as the team’s size, competencies, and their ability to develop norms and ways of working together. The proposed framework is applicable for managers, innovation leaders, and team members, and contributes to previous research on shared leadership and innovation leadership. Further research on the proposed framework is suggested.

There are notable indigenous business models in the African context that have either been unexplored or are yet to be highlighted and given due attention at the international level. This chapter provides a cross-case analysis of the indigenous business practices of three ethnic groups across West Africa: Nigeria (Igbos), Ghana (Ewes) and the Benin Republic (Guns), thus viewing business models, from anglophone and francophone perspectives. Specifically, the chapter discusses the apprenticeship models igba-boi, of the Igbo society, dorsorsror, among the Ewes, and eyi alo within the Guns society and succession models in the three societies ‘Inochi anya, domenyinyi and eyi kanta’ respectively, with the aim of highlighting insights for practice, policy and academia. Historically, there have been relevant structures to ensure the transfer of knowledge and wealth to the next generation; this is driven by both cultural and traditional systems of the ethnic groups. The findings show that the family unit plays a significant role in building a sustainable channel, though informal, through which the heritage of business models is attained. To this end, the authors recommend leveraging the unique models of apprenticeship and business succession practised in these ethnic groups to support current policies, such as those relating to Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET).

This chapter offers a comprehensive review the literature on authentic leadership (AL). The authors employ a bibliometric approach to identify, classify, visualise and synthesise relevant scholarly publications and the work of a core group of interdisciplinary scholars who are key contributors to the research on AL. They review 264 journal articles, adopting a clustering technique to assess the central themes of AL scholarship. They identify five distinct thematic clusters: authenticity in the context of leadership; structure of AL; social perspectives on AL; dynamism of AL; and value perceptions of AL. Velt and Sinkovics assert that these clusters will help scholars of AL to understand the dominant streams in the literature and provide a foundation for future research.

This chapter traces the intersectional experiences of one Black woman through pre-Brown schooling, becoming a teacher under a post-Brown court order, hiring teachers as a school leader in a large metropolitan, southern city, to her current position as a leader-educator at a state university. Informed and contextualized by social, political, and historical events associated with the pre-Brown segregation, desegregation, and post-Brown eras, this chapter uses narrative autoethnographic reflectivity and storytelling to understand and analyze the nuances of educational hiring practices through the prism of one Black woman's educational journey. The story is significant because it not only provides evidence of the subtleties and nuances of racism but it also describes the changes in teaching, leadership, and hiring practices in southern public education over the last 60 years.